Noon Player Notes in the Draft (Dec 30)

With the Blue Jackets now 11 points back of a Wild Card spot in the Eastern Conference, dead last in the conference, I may add, they will get their number one goalie back in the lineup on Saturday, as they have activated Sergei Bobrovsky from the Injured Reserve on Wednesday, sending Joonas Korpisalo back to the AHL at the same time.  Bobrovsky has been out since the second week of December with a groin injury and his expected recovery time was three weeks, so he's pretty much on time.

This will now give Troy two healthy goalies once again, which couldn't come soon enough, as his side is currently flirting with the Basement Dweller nod this week, having only 2 points through two nights.  When Bob left Troy's lineup, the pool team was in 6th place, 9 points out of the money and when he comes back, Troy is in 7th, 17 points out of the money.  To be fair, the week after Bobrovsky was hurt, Troy went up to 3rd place without him, but it has been a recent drop that has seen Troy's team struggle.

Another big return is on the horizon, as the Philadelphia Flyers have activated defenseman Mark Streit from the IR on Wednesday morning/afternoon.  Streit has been out since the middle of November with a pubic plate detachment and it was thought to keep the defender out for upwards of six weeks and that's pretty much what we've seen, give or take a week.  In order to do that, the Flyers went ahead and buried Sam Gagner in the minors, who cleared waivers today to make the moves possible.

Mike had the option of dropping Streit at the Waiver Draft, but opted to keep him on, missing out on a few more weeks and now he's going to hope that the returns are good enough, that he wasn't going to get that from anyone he picked up.  When Streit left the lineup, Mike's team was in 19th, but his team has since dropped to 24th, but I wouldn't put that all on Streit's absence.

On Tuesday night, the Dallas Stars lost the services of forward Ales Hemsky, who left the game against the Blue Jackets with a lower-body injury.  There hasn't been a lot made of his injury status, thus far, but we should see something fairly soon.  The oft-injured forward hasn't missed much time yet this year, only being scratched for one game this season.  He'll be day-to-day with a lower-body injury, unless otherwise noted.

Stuart took a risk on Hemsky at the Waiver Draft and hasn't seen much for returns from this pick-up, as he has only seen 2 assists in 11 games played, since activation.  The Stars have three more games to play this week and Stuart's team is on the verge of making some noise, moving up to 4th place, but still 14 points out of the money.

Details are yet to emerge on why Zach Parise wasn't at Wild practice on Wednesday morning, but the early speculation is not very positive.  What we do know thus far is that Parise has already been ruled out of Thursday's game in St. Louis and any decision after that will be made when it is known whether or not he can practice on Friday.  There are some fears about whether or not this injury long-term, so we'll wait and see.

This has to be very concerning for Benson, whose team is mired in 23rd place, but not in any danger of being in the Basement Dweller this week.  Benson doesn't have any stock in the mini-games, as they are 120 minutes behind in the PIM pool, without a rookie and his goalies eliminated him off the hop.

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